Do You Get Your Songs Mastered Before Posting Them To Your Music Site?

[john]

Hi

I was wondering what sort of percentage of our members were getting their tracks mastered before they posted their finished songs to their music pages?

As mastering, among other things, adds the final polish to your songs it's an important topic!

Cheers

John

[FinnArild]

eh - I don't post my mixes, I release them ... but I answered as if ...

[john]

You don't master them yourself or get somone else to master them?

[Prometheus]

You don't master them yourself or get somone else to master them?

I master my own tracks... I like to make sure I get the best...

More seriously, recording music is hard. Mastering the results of a professional mixdown is easy. Why bake a cake and then pay someone else to tie a ribbon round it?

[FinnArild]

I prefer others to master my tracks, since after mixing I am too familiar with the track too listen to it objectively.

[Prometheus]

I prefer others to master my tracks, since after mixing I am too familiar with the track too listen to it objectively.

I would certainly agree that it's a good idea to have a second pair of educated ears on your mix, although I would rather use one of my friends in this capacity than pay through the nose.

I have a tendency to be a little cynical about this kind of thing, so please don't misunderstand me, I'm not suggesting that mastering engineers don't have a function. Performing damage limitation on things that have gone wrong as a mastering engineer is very challenging indeed.

Restoring old tapes with oxide shedding, for example, to some kind of listenable quality takes a lot of technical know-how and prestidigation, but if a song has been professionally recorded and mixed, anyone with a basic knowledge of how to read graphs and operate a PC should be able to master it given a spec to follow.

Of course, when I was reliant on sound engineering for a living, I probably would not have admitted this openly since it suited me to carry on the imposture that mastering a pro mix is still difficult in the digital era.

To put this into perspective, it's noteworthy that recording and mixing an album takes weeks and then mastering it takes a few hours.

[FinnArild]

Maybe you could do my next album, Prometheus ...

[Prometheus]

Maybe you could do my next album, Prometheus ...

It could be possible to work out a way... I think flights between Norway and Scotland are pretty cheap and if both of us were involved in the process you could be sure you were happy with what I was doing. The work itself would be free of charge.

The thing that militates against it is that the flat I'm in now has abominable acoustics, beyond correction without making major alterations to it. That would mean hiring a studio, so you might not end up saving anything.

[KharmaDoll]

I'm hoping that people will find the ambient living room noise adds to my charm. So, nope.

[TheBrewer]

I'm right now in the process of mastering my album. First time i'm doing mastering. Not so obvious. I read a lot of things in the last month about mastering and the most difficult part is not to put too much of this and too much of that. First time i did master a track 3 weeks ago, i sent it to someone who is helping me with my album and he told me right away 'you put too much of effects in this man!'. I understood what he meant right when i listened to it again and removed a little of this and a little of that gradually... Everything became clearer when i did that.

Now, first thing i'm doing is apply the compressor, the limiter, the meter, the Multi-Band harmonics exciter (flat) and the Spectrum Analyzer EQ (flat too). I setup the compressor and the limiter and verify with the meter if it looks ok. Once that done, i begin to analyze the frequencies with the spectrum analyzer and then, i adjust the EQ gradually, little by little and when i'm pleased by the frequencies, i take off a little bit of my adjustments i did. After this, i play a bit with the mutli-band harmonics exciter, again little by little and once i'm pleased with the sound, i remove again a little of my changes i just made in it.

Then i bounce everything to a track, go in my 2 cars and listen. I then take notes of what's good and what's bad and i try to compare at that stage my track with 2 or 3 more cd's i have handy in the cars. Once i did that, 85 to 90% of the work is done. I then go to my Sonic pro, ply a bit to makes some changes in my EQ and my Harmonics exciter, regarding to my notes i took in the car, i bounce everything again and return in the cars. At that point 95-98% of the work is done.

Finally, i ask 2-3 people to listen to it and finally adjust everything to end up with the final product. I usually try to limit myself to those mastering tools. Sometimes, i will try to put some stereo spreader for everything that's over 450 hertz of frequencies, but again, it never goes up to 9 or 10% of spreader.

It would be interesting to know what others do when they master their tracks....

Feel free to suggest me some other things, i'm not the 'mastering God' yet!

Pascal

Edited October 5, 2011 by TheBrewer

[Prometheus]

I'm right now in the process of mastering my album. First time i'm doing mastering. Not so obvious. I read a lot of things in the last month about mastering and the most difficult part is not to put too much of this and too much of that. First time i did master a track 3 weeks ago, i sent it to someone who is helping me with my album and he told me right away 'you put too much of effects in this man!'. I understood what he meant right when i listened to it again and removed a little of this and a little of that gradually... Everything became clearer when i did that.

Now, first thing i'm doing is apply the compressor, the limiter, the meter, the Multi-Band harmonics exciter (flat) and the Spectrum Analyzer EQ (flat too). I setup the compressor and the limiter and verify with the meter if it looks ok. Once that done, i begin to analyze the frequencies with the spectrum analyzer and then, i adjust the EQ gradually, little by little and when i'm pleased by the frequencies, i take off a little bit of my adjustments i did. After this, i play a bit with the mutli-band harmonics exciter, again little by little and once i'm pleased with the sound, i remove again a little of my changes i just made in it.

Then i bounce everything to a track, go in my 2 cars and listen. I then take notes of what's good and what's bad and i try to compare at that stage my track with 2 or 3 more cd's i have handy in the cars. Once i did that, 85 to 90% of the work is done. I then go to my Sonic pro, ply a bit to makes some changes in my EQ and my Harmonics exciter, regarding to my notes i took in the car, i bounce everything again and return in the cars. At that point 95-98% of the work is done.

Finally, i ask 2-3 people to listen to it and finally adjust everything to end up with the final product. I usually try to limit myself to those mastering tools. Sometimes, i will try to put some stereo spreader for everything that's over 450 hertz of frequencies, but again, it never goes up to 9 or 10% of spreader.

It would be interesting to know what others do when they master their tracks....

Feel free to suggest me some other things, i'm not the 'mastering God' yet!

Pascal

You're on the right track... Small moves... Don't just slap a multiband enhancer or compressor on the mixdown because it's there, think about whether it actually needs it. The only time I've ever had to use multiband compression is when the kick drum and bass guitar have been badly compressed at the mixing stage. I've used a multiband enhancer to restore damaged tapes where the top end of the spectral domain has been lost to oxide shedding, but in configuring a well mixed track so that it's going to sound good on a CD player, usually all it needs is EQ tweaks and a bit of stone wall limiting.

I would strongly recommend using subtractive EQ whenever possible. Do parametric sweeps and take out the frequencies that are undesirable. That ends up sounding far more natural than adding EQ. In mixes that have been done by a pro engineer, nearly all your problems will come from below 1 Khz...

[Prometheus]

I'm hoping that people will find the ambient living room noise adds to my charm. So, nope.

It worked for Les Paul, the first and greatest Multitrack engineer.

[bri]

I've used a multiband enhancer to restore damaged tapes where the top end of the spectral domain has been lost to oxide shedding

Do parametric sweeps

Showoff (lol). Must be nice when you know what you're talking about, rather than being like me...........guessing

[Prometheus]

Showoff (lol). Must be nice when you know what you're talking about, rather than being like me...........guessing

Three years learning to play guitar another six years getting to grips with arranging music and doing occasional bass guitar sessions, then another three at college studying musicology, sound engineering and psychoacoustics, followed by five years on the road and running a recording, mixing and mastering studio as a freelance sound engineer.

And the culmination of it all is that I'm totally disillusioned with the music industry and now work in aerospace...

Still, no regrets. I still love writing and producing music for myself and others as a labour of love.

[Vlady]

I'm still learning and I don't have the money to pay for a mastering engineer. So - no. But I think that if you have spent the last 1-2 years or so working on a serious project, why not? Of course you'll be needing your songs to sound pristine.

[Prometheus]

I'm still learning and I don't have the money to pay for a mastering engineer. So - no. But I think that if you have spent the last 1-2 years or so working on a serious project, why not? Of course you'll be needing your songs to sound pristine.

If you're going to record it and mix it yourself, you'll have to develop the skillset a mastering engineer requires anyway.

That is the thing that so many people don't seem to get. Unless you get a pro engineer to record and mix your product or learn how to produce a record yourself, he's only going to be polishing a turd when you send it to him to master it.

[Vlady]

Prometheus, dо you mean that one needs to know how to master a song despite it's being sent to a mastering engineer?

Edited July 23, 2012 by Vlady

[Prometheus]

Prometheus, dо you mean that one needs to know how to master a song despite it's being sent to a mastering engineer?

What I mean is that by the time you have the skills to record and mix a song, you also have the skills you need to master it.

Mastering is the easiest part of the process which is why it takes far less time to master an album than it does to record and mix one.

In the old days it took a hell of a lot of experience and responsibililty because you had to use a very expensive mechanical cutting needle that could be damaged by low end phase issues. That is no longer the case, but as a former pro engineer it is plain to me that other pro engineers are trying to maintain the myth that mastering is still something that no ordinary human being should attempt.

It's a load of rubbish. To be fair, trying to remaster an old damaged reel of tape with serious oxide shedding is hard. Mastering a track made in any half decent studio by any half decent engineer and musicians is easy. Any pro engineer who thinks otherwise has led a very sheltered life.

I don't know any sound engineer who would take business to record and mix a track but then refuse to master it because that's too technical for them. Any that would do not have the right stuff to be a pro engineer.

All the mastering process really amounts to is turning a track that is not suitable for stereo playback into one that is. This will almost invariably entail stone wall limiting and some EQ changes to flatten the track. It may also involve the application of band variable compression or multistemming (basically applying different effects to elements of a multitrack that have been allocated to group busses). It takes practice and prestidigitation, but anyone can learn to do it.

[Vlady]

Very in-depth! Thank you.

[Prometheus]

You're very welcome...

It is a pet bug bear of mine, the mystique surrounding mastering, and now that I no longer rely on the music industry for money and never will do again, I no longer have to maintain the imposture...